“If you want,” Kira offered while she shut and locked the door, and I shot her a look.
I folded my arms over my chest and returned Rhys’s stare. “I know we were only married for three months, but you should know that there’s no way you could expect me not to stick around for whatever’s about to happen.”
Rhys smiled in amusement, and his dark eyes brightened with memories of us from four years ago. “Never hurts to try, Kennedy.” He continued dragging the boy behind him until he got to the couch and yanked him closer. “Sit. Don’t even try to move.”
Kira stepped back slowly until she got to the table where we’d been sitting, and silently sat down, her wide eyes on the three of us in the living room.
“Who are you?” I asked the guy when he looked up at us.
“I’m asking the questions,” Rhys grumbled, and gave me a dark look that I reciprocated. The action had his expression lightening again before he could control it to look back at the guy on my couch.
“Who are you?” Rhys repeated my question.
“Wait, I don’t even know what he was doing to make you chase after him and drag him back in here,” I said when the boy refused to respond.
Rhys didn’t look at me this time; he kept his stare on the boy. “He was looking through the sliding glass door. I thought I saw him when I was cooking, but he was gone when I checked out back. When I got back from the grocery store this afternoon, he was leaving a paper on the front door.”
“Was it a love letter?” I asked sarcastically, and the boy’s blank expression morphed into a mocking smile.
Rhys just sighed. “No, will you let me—”
“Well, then where’s the paper? I want to see it.”
“I threw it away, it didn’t have anything on it but a symbol.”
I was already confused that this guy—who didn’t look like he was a legal adult yet—would be scoping out our condo, but as soon as I heard the word symbol, I gasped and glanced at Rhys, then looked at Kira’s worried face. “Get the paper,” I ordered, then eyed the boy as I asked Rhys, “It’s in the kitchen trash, right?”
“Yeah,” he said hesitantly, drawing out the word to sound like a question. “Why?”
I didn’t respond, I just kept my gaze on the mocking face of the boy in front of me. “Name. Now.”
“Juarez,” he replied immediately, and my lip curled.
“I fucking doubt that. Name.”
“Kennedy,” Kira called from the kitchen, and held up the crinkled paper.
I pointed to the paper and asked the boy, “What does the symbol mean?”
“Juarez,” he answered again.
“What the hell is happening?” Rhys asked on a harsh whisper, and grabbed my arm to pull me back a few steps. His eyes widened when we heard Kira calling 911 from the kitchen. “Kennedy, what the fuck?”
“No, no. Don’t do that!” the boy said quickly, and suddenly his mocking expression was replaced with worry as he started to stand. “It’s just a joke! I swear, I mean . . . they just sent me here to see if you’re here.”
“Shut the fuck up, and sit down,” Rhys demanded, then looked at Kira and me again. “What’s happening?”
I gave him the quickest explanation I could of what had been going on back home, and every few seconds Rhys would have to look over at the boy to stop him from trying to stand up again.
“No one thought this was important to tell me?” Rhys bit out when I was finished. “Including your dad?”
“I swear they just pay me!” the boy said frantically, and stood again. “Don’t call the cops, I’ll—”
Rhys shoved him down and caged him against the couch, then leaned close so his face was inches from the boy’s. “Tampa PD; if you don’t sit here and shut up, I will personally fly you back to Florida and arrest you there.”
“Man, I don’t know anything,” the boy cried as his eyes welled up. “They just pay me, man, I swear!”
“Pay you to do what?” I asked.
The boy shrugged and sniffed. “To mail letters, and to leave them at the police department and your parents’ house.”
My face smoothed out and I choked on a laugh when a snot bubble came out of the boy’s nose as he sobbed. He looked terrified, and now I was worried he was going to pee on the couch. “Juarez pays you?”
The boy shrugged again. “Someone does. Juarez just tells me what to say and draw.”
“What’s your name?” I asked again; this time my tone was softer, but still held a hint of amusement at how the situation had drastically turned around. Not that I would have ever been scared of the boy himself, it was the situation that had me freaked out. He looked like he weighed no more than a hundred and twenty pounds, and having him come in trying to act like a badass only to start crying had me seconds from bursting into laughter.
“Matthew. My name’s Matthew.”
“Okay, Matthew, how do you know Juarez?” I looked over to Rhys when I realized he had stopped questioning the boy, but his eyes were wide as he watched the boy break down in hysterics.
“I was visiting my pop in prison. My pop owed Juarez a favor from the inside and told me to go to him, so I went to visit him to see what he wanted.”
“How did you know the girls were here?” Rhys asked.
“I d-didn’t, I swear. It was just a possibility. Juarez said there was family here, so I came. I’ve been following your uncle for almost a week, and saw you all go to his place for Thanksgiving, so I followed you back here. But I didn’t know if these were even the girls I was looking for. I had to get a computer so I could search for their social media accounts to get pictures of—” Matthew cut off on loud sobs, and I had to bite my cheeks in order to keep myself from laughing.
“Police are coming,” Kira mumbled from the kitchen, and Matthew cried harder.
I sighed and shrugged when Rhys gave me a confused look.
“What were your orders this time?” he asked gently, and I smiled, knowing that Rhys understood how to handle this situation. It was so hard to be mad at this boy since he’d just gotten mixed up with the wrong people because of his dad.
“Just to scare them with the symbol. But you’d gotten it earlier, so I’ve been waiting for the girls to come back. I was going to leave another note and knock once they were here.”
“This poor kid,” I whispered when Rhys took another step back so he was next to me.
“I don’t know what to say now,” Rhys said low enough that it wouldn’t carry.
“I know,” I agreed, and studied the kid again. “Matthew, do you know if Juarez has anyone else harassing my family?”
Matthew shook his head and choked out a sob. “I don’t know, maybe. I’m sorry, I just wanted to help my pop and make money.”
“And you don’t know who’s paying you?”
He looked up to me. “No. They mailed me a bank card and they just keep putting money in it for me. Oh no! No, please don’t let them arrest me!” he cried out when sirens sounded close by.
I gave him a sympathetic smile, but didn’t know what else to say. It was ridiculous that a kid who had been harassing my family could have me feeling so bad for him, but I couldn’t help it. And from Kira and Rhys’s expressions, they felt the same.